Roger Ailes on His Counter-Biography: Mission Accomplished

When Fox News chief Roger Ailes found out a reporter was writing mean biography about him, he commissioned a glowing one to counter it, Roger Ailes: Off Camera. It's only been out for a day, but both Ailes chief and favored biographer Zev Chafets are quite pleased with the result. "I picked Zev," Ailes told The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz. "He’s an actual author, a good journalist. He’s mature and thoughtful and not out to hurt people." Chafets used more Ailsian terms. "He figured out that I wasn’t going to f--- him. And he was right. I didn’t," Chafets told The New Republic's Marc Tracy.

The Chafets biography -- trashed by The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani as a more boring rewrite of Ailes' own book pushed more than two decades ago -- is supposed to counter a forthcoming Ailes biography written by Gabriel Sherman, who has reported on Fox News for New York magazine, and is expected to write a less-than-flattering portrait. "I’m not saying anything about the other guy," Ailes said of Sherman.

There are only two reporters Ailes has spoken to recently: Zev Chafets and Howard Kurtz. We know why he picked Chafets. What about Kurtz?